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java.net Spotlight

Launched in late April, the Java Mobility Podcast has already put out eight professionally-produced episodes featuring interviews and discussions on a number of topics of interest to the mobile developer community, including important JSRs and device fragmentation, vendor initiatives like Vodafone Betavine, OpenLazlo for ME devices, and more. Subscribe to the podcast via its feed, or find the podcast in the iTunes Store.

The Blu-Dahlia project is a California-based user's group for developers of Blu-Ray Java applications, and applications for other GEM TV platforms, such as OCAP and MHP and GEM-IPTV. Like the nightclub in Raymond Chandler's 1946 movie, the Blu-Dahlia Java SIG is a place to exchange ideas and best practices among professionals. Blu-Dahlia intends to be an open group for the sharing of best practices in application development, including tools, techniques, frameworks, and shared code.

Featured prominently at JavaOne 2007, Project Wonderland is a 3D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games. A number of Wonderland video demos and interviews are available in the project's News section.

The Shoal project, part of the GlassFish Community, is a java based clustering framework that provides infrastructure to build fault tolerance, reliability and availability. The framework can be plugged into any product needing clustering and related distributed systems capabilities without tightly binding to a specific communications infrastructure.
For a quick introduction, you can go through the Shoal Overview Presentation (PDF). and for further details, read the Shoal Overview document for details on Shoal's functionalities.

Introduced in the JavaOne general session, Project OpenJFX is a project of the OpenJFX community for sharing early versions of the JavaFX Script language and for collaborating on its development. In the future, the JavaFX Script code will be open sourced. The governance, licensing, and community models will be worked out as the project evolves. JavaFX is a new family of Sun products based on Java technology and targeted at the high impact, rich content market. JavaFX Script is a highly productive scripting language that enables content developers to create rich media and content for deployment on Java environments.

Once again, java.net's booth at JavaOne will be the place for several dozen 20-minute mini-talks, presented by members of the java.net community, about their projects, communities, and related activities. We'll be recording all the talks and sending them out as podcasts over the next few weeks. You can listen the podcasts by visiting the Community Corner podcast page, subscribing to the feed, or finding the podcast via the iTunes Store.

Got a question about Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT) and Project Tango, two efforts focused
on delivering interoperability between Java EE and .Net? The next Ask the Experts session spotlights these topics, allowing you to post your questions and get answers from Sun experts Arun Gupta, Harold Carr, and Marek Potociar. This session runs from April 30 through May 4.

Combine NetBeans Day with a GlassFish Day, add some OpenJDK and Mobile & Embedded, and you've got CommunityOne, a free and open event sponsored by Sun, taking place in San Francisco on Monday, May 7, on the eve of JavaOne. Along with formal session tracks, the event features a co-located unconference, a startup camp, a lunchtime session of the Java Posse podcast, and an opening general session by Tim O'Reilly.

The Java Mobile Application Video Contest deadline of April 27th is fast approaching. This contest seeks example of great Java ME applications or services. To enter, create a video of up to three minutes that references Java ME or the open-source phoneME technology used, and post it to YouTube. Prizes include a Ericsson K800 phone, Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD Player, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and PlayStation 3 consoles. Check the official rules for more information and specifics of submitting your video.

The Beans Binding project gives you an advance look at the work going into the early draft of JSR 295, which uses a modified version of the GlassFish JSP/JSF Expression Language (EL) to keep properties of two beans in sync, which can in turn be used to simplify rich GUI development. This project provides the reference implementation of Beans Binding, with an additional emphasis on the ability to bind to Swing components, and easy integration with IDEs such as NetBeans. "The intended audience for this snapshot is members of the community interested in binding, who want to see where we're headed and to provide early feedback. So that's exactly what we're looking for at this point; constructive feedback and bug reports are welcome."

The java.net Community Corner at JavaOne 2007 will be your place to meet up with fellow project members and community leaders, and attend 20-minute mini-talks from fellow java.net members. Sign-ups for the mini-talks are still available, so post an abstract and you can show off your project in the booth (and to the audience of java.net podcast listeners). Finally, we'll have a running slide-show of java.net-related pictures, such as photos of project members and teams, screenshots, meetups, etc. If you'd like to add a photo from your project to the slideshow, just follow the directions.

The ROME project "is an open source (Apache license) set of Atom/RSS Java utilities that make it easy to work in Java with most syndication formats: RSS 0.90, RSS 0.91 Netscape, RSS 0.91 Userland, RSS 0.92, RSS 0.93, RSS 0.94, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3, and Atom 1.0." ROME includes a set of parsers and generators for the various flavors of syndication feeds, as well as converters to convert from one format to another. Check out the Powered By ROME wiki page to get an idea of how many sites are using ROME for their feed needs.

Know of a great mobile application or service that runs on Java ME? The Java Mobile Application Video Contest is your chance to tell the world about it, and maybe just pick up a sweet prize. To enter, create a video of up to three minutes that references Java ME or the open-source phoneME technology used, and post it to YouTube. Prizes include a Ericsson K800 phone, Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD Player, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and PlayStation 3 consoles. Check the official rules and post your video by April 27.

The latest SDN Ask the Experts session is on JAX-WS 2.1. JAX-WS 2.0, a follow-on to Java API for XML-based RPC 1.1(JAX-RPC), simplifies the task of developing
web services using Java technology. JAX-WS 2.1 is a maintenance release that adds WS-Addressing capabilities
to JAX-WS 2.0. Got a question about JAX-WS 2.1? Submit your questions from February 26 through March 2
on the Ask the Experts page and get answers from three JAX-WS experts at Sun: Vivek Pandey, Jitendra Kotamraju, and Kohsuke Kawaguchi.

java.net is getting ready for May's JavaOne 2007 conference. Check out our JavaOne wiki page, in which we'll be keeping track of technical session and BoF's presented by java.net members, along with other java.net activities during the week. And once again, we'll be in the Pavilion with the java.net Community Corner, which gives you an opportunity to present your project, JUG, community, or other java.net-related mini-talk, both before a live audience in the booth and via the java.net podcast feed.

The latest SDN Ask The Experts session looks at the Java Plug-In technology, which as you probably know is included as part of the JRE and which establishes a connection between popular browsers and the Java platform. From now through Friday, February 16, you can ask your questions about the Java Plug-In and have them answered by Java SE Deployment Team members Dennis Gu, Calvin Cheung, and Margarita Fisher.

The JSR-296Swing Application Framework prototype implementation is a small set of Java classes that simplify building desktop applications. The prototype provides infrastructure that's common to most desktop applications: application lifecyle, support for managing and loading resources, support for defining/managing/binding Actions, and persistent session state. The JSR-296 expert group launched this effort in late summer 2006. A prototype implementation, spec, and some small examples are now available. Although the JSR has not reached the "Early Draft" JCP review stage, the expert group has agreed to make the prototype public to give interested members of the Swing community the opportunity to provide feedback. This version is just a snapshot of the ongoing design process, it's likely to change substantially in the coming months.

The registration page for the JavaOne 2007 conference is now available. Early Bird discounts apply to conference passes purchased before April 4. This year's conference, which runs May 8-11 in San Fancisco, features a "new, expanded program that embraces technologies outside the core Java Platform, while keeping Java technology as the focal point of the Conference."

The latest SDN Ask the Experts session addresses the topic of Open-Source Java. From Tuesday, January 16 to Friday, January 19, you can submit your questions on the open-sourcing of Sun's Java implementations, and have those questions answered by Richard Sands, Kenneth Drachnik, and Vivek Mody, the Community Marketing Managers for the SE, EE, and ME platforms respectively. You may also want to visit the Free and Open-Source Java FAQ in advance, or ask the experts a follow-up question about a topic from the FAQ.

The SIP Communicator project is an audio/video Internet phone and instant messenger, which recently put out a 1.0 alpha 1 release after more than a year of development. SIP Communicator supports some of the most popular instant messaging and telephony protocols such as SIP, Jabber, AIM/ICQ, MSN and soon others like Yahoo and IRC. More information on using the project is available in a FAQ list.

The 3D desktop Project Looking Glass is approaching its 1.0 release, with the recent announcement of LG3D 1.0 RC1, with a final release expected soon. But what is a "3D" desktop? According to its home page, "Project Looking Glass is based on Java technology and explores bringing a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualization capabilities. It is an open source development project based on and evolved from Sun Microsystems' Advanced Development division. It supports running unmodified existing applications in a 3D space, as well as APIs for 3D window manager and application development."

The Semblance project provides reusable components for Java applications in the form of two framework subprojects and an example application subproject. Semblance emerged from earlier work done in the StrutsLive framework, as it came to include a number of powerful and generically useful facilities that could potentially add a great deal of value outside the web tier. The Semblance project made it possible to divide the original StrutsLive codebase into two frameworks. Struts-dependent code would remain in StrutsLive, and the rest would move to the new Foundation framework, no longer encumbered by ties to Struts, or to the web tier in general.

The Mobile & Embedded Community is a gathering place that enables and empowers developers to collaborate and innovate, driving the evolution and adoption of the Java(TM) Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) for mobile and embedded devices. Here you can be a part of a robust culture of developers and technology experts and find people with similar interests and goals. For more information, see our community vision.

The Semblance project has announced the release of Semblance 1.0B1, which incorporates the StrutsLive framework (formerly maintained as a separate project) a new Foundation framework, and a comprehensive example application. This is a major feature release that adds support for XHTML templating, dynamic query generation, and list management, including pagination, navigation, sorting, filtering, and selection management. Please see the release notes for further details.

Want JSF without JSP? Have a look at Facelets. "The web community is eagerly seeking a framework like Tapestry, backed by JavaServer Faces as the industry standard. While JavaServer Faces and JSP are meant to be aligned, Facelets steps outside of the JSP spec and provides a highly performant, JSF-centric view technology. Anyone who has created a JSP page will be able to do the same with Facelets. The difference is under the hood where all the burden of the JSP Vendor API is removed to more greatly enhance JSF performance and provide easy plug-and-go development."

Want JSF without JSP baggage? Have a look at Facelets. "The web community is eagerly seeking a framework like Tapestry, backed by JavaServer Faces as the industry standard. While JavaServer Faces and JSP are meant to be aligned, Facelets steps outside of the JSP spec and provides a highly performant, JSF-centric view technology. Anyone who has created a JSP page will be able to do the same with Facelets. The difference is under the hood where all the burden of the JSP Vendor API is removed to more greatly enhance JSF performance and provide easy plug-and-go development."

The Current CMS project offers a content management system (CMS) that is the product of nine years of development, originally developed with flat files and perl, but later migrated to Java. Current CMS is a multi-user CMS with workflow, versioning and publishing capabilities. It includes a generator that prepares scaffolding including Java model and view classes, JSP, SQL create and alters... all based on simple XML configuration files. The project was also the subject of a recent java.net feature article.

The TrueLicense Library Collection "aims at managing licensing aspects for closed source Java applications in a secure, reliable, flexible and yet easy way." The package allows you to create and verify licenses that are bound to a person, company, or any other entity, can be perpetual or granted for a specific time, and can provide a "free trial period" license functionality. Licenses use the digital signature methods of the Java Security API, and privacy of installed license content is maintained by using the password based encryption mechanisms provided by the Java Cryptography Extension. The project also offers two tutorials, the The TrueLicense Library Collection Tutorial and the Introduction to the TrueLicense Library Collection[PDF].

The Timing Framework project is a library to simplify Java animation and timing-based control. Introduced by the articles Timing is Everything and Time Again, it offers fundamental timing classes, interpolation facilities, and a set of trigger classes to facilitate starting and stopping animation based on events.